


Captain O' Captain

by thompsonitis



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, I have no knowledge of piloting anything, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thompsonitis/pseuds/thompsonitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The times Xephos piloted anything, it mostly ended badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain O' Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on my tumblr. Go to my tumblr if you're interested in seeing more of my work. (I usually post a work on Tumblr first.)
> 
> http://thompsonandco.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing

His first memory of piloting anything is something that Xephos can barely remember. With his amnesia, it’s hard to remember anything from his previous life, really, but he remembers that, faint as it is.

He remembers space, the final frontier, the last adventure.

Space in all her vast glory, indifferent to him while he hurtles down through the atmosphere of a new world. He remembers peering through a reinforced glass-like material, watching as a white ghost in the deep raised up and exploded, soundless in the void. Remembers being breathless and unable to understand the bright colours left from where he had come from, bright as a supernova but not quite as destructive; less beautiful and more heart-wrenching for reasons he could not recall.

Then, he remembers instinct taking over, the need to live outweighing his confusion, and throwing himself at controls. He remembers fiddling with the knobs and buttons, panting and sweating as his metal container burned and fell apart around him. He remembers spotting blue, rippling and alive, and thinking  _there’s my chance_.

Xephos remembers being thrown around while crashing into an ocean, then into the world’s sandy beaches, then into dirt before finally coming to a skidding stop, hurting all over and still breathing, head about to explode.

\- X -

The second time he pilots something is the time when he and Honeydew board a boat to some far off country, hoping to be left alone for awhile. At least until they were ready to come back to Minecraftia.

It’s supposed to be a vacation, a holiday from their usual routine. One stormy night is enough to change their holiday into a nightmare- before they even reach the bloody place.

The captain of the ship is dead, taken out with about a quarter of the main crew by a creeper explosion not an hour into the storm. The rest of the crew men are running  around, trying to fix the damage and fight off the monster invasion. 

Xephos and Honeydew themselves have no idea what they’re doing, which isn’t unusual.

They had left behind their usual armour and weapons back at Minecraftia, having been assured that nothing would happen. Now, they regret that decision, especially as the only weapons they could get are only what they can find.

The other passengers of the boat had split up some time ago, under some impression that the best way to survive is to abandon any dead weight and save themselves. Xephos and Honeydew did not follow the fitter, more able part of the passengers trying to escape the large ship; they didn’t have the heart to.

Which is how Xephos finds himself steering the ship.

“Fuck!” he swears, trying to turn the leviathan to the left, away from the ominous rocks that rose out of the ocean like an omen. “Fuck!” he swears again.

Behind him, Honeydew is fighting off the monsters that attack them, yelling incoherently and screeching when spiders or creepers come too close for comfort.

The ship’s wheel is solid and steady under Xephos’ hands, but they give him no comfort. Not when he keeps looking down, expecting something else than a wooden wheel.

“Honeydew! The ship’s gonna crash!” he yells. They haven’t yet quite reached the towering rocks, but Xephos can recognize a lost cause when he sees one, can feel a crash coming in the pit of his stomach, intuition or instinct telling him to abandon the ship now, lest he be caught in the crash.

“What?!” Honeydew yells, kicking away a zombie. “What the fuck do we do then?!”

“The lifeboat to the left! We just need to get to it!” Xephos yells back, still trying to steer the ship. Honeydew screeches something that Xephos can’t make out, jumping over the holes in the deck made by creeper explosions. He’s making his way over to the boat, Xephos realizes.

Xephos looks back down, half expecting bright colours where the ship’s wheel is. There are none but the light of the torch, placed hastily on the wooden floor next to his feet. His hands are still trying to steer the ship left, still trying even though Honeydew is already on the lifeboat, even though the crash is imminent and almost everyone on this ship is either dead, dying or undead.

“Xephos! C’mon, man- we need to get outta here!” Honeydew yells, and Xephos is still trying to save the ship, still moving the wheel like it will make a difference, still replaying the mantra ‘ _a captain should go down with his ship_ ’-

“Xephos!”

\- but this isn’t his ship, is it?

The realization strikes Xephos like a brick to the face. Why he even has that mantra, he doesn’t know, but it’s going to get him killed. He takes a deep breath and wrenches his hands away from the wheel, watching as it spun wildly without his hands there to guide it. He turns away, the words  _not my ship_  repeating in his head, and he runs to the lifeboat with a mighty, terrified roar, leaping through the throng of monsters like a gazelle.

That’s the story of how they end up on that deserted island, actually.

\- X - 

The third time he pilots something is a complete disaster. He’s starting to think it’s a pattern.

The Celaeno is going down rapidly, Lysander is out cold, Honeydew is busy shoving Peculier and Lysander into the relative safety of the bloody cabin, and Xephos is at the fucking wheel, screaming his life out as he saves everyone else's.

The smoke from somewhere below is heating the air up outside the balloon, meaning that the Celaeno’s balloon is as good a having a flag to keep them afloat.

Xephos turns the ship to a hard right, narrowly avoiding the craggy cliffs that spelt doom and death.

It’s a funny and long story, how Xephos came to be the pilot, but the short version works just as well. Lysander hit his bloody head when he fell, just as the ship started its rapid descent through the mountains.

“Guess the goggles don’t really matter!” Honeydew yells, slipping and sliding his way over to Xephos.

Xephos laughs hysterically, turning the ship to the left to avoid a majestic mountain and its even more majestic friend. The airship’s wheel feels the same as the wheel of the ship that got Honeydew and him stranded, but it’s warmer, a bit smoother.

It’s just as unfamiliar.

“Tie-” his voice breaks, panic welling in his throat. “Tie yourself to the ship, something sturdy!” He turns the ship left again, wincing as the airship scraped against a jagged mountain peak. The short length of the rope tying him to the ship’s wheel whips around him, lashing at his arms as he turns the wheel again.

“Right!” Honeydew says, grabbing the spare rope that had been tied to a hook. He loops it around his waist a few times like Xephos had, knotted it tightly. The ship banks to the right before Honeydew ties down the other end, and it’s all Xephos can do to straighten the ship out so that it doesn’t crash into mountains or send his friend flying into the open air.

Honeydew manages to struggle over to a post that Xephos has no clue as to its purpose. It’s there though, and it looks like it can hold on to his dwarven friend, so Xephos can only look forward again as his friend ties himself down.

“Hold on!” Xephos yells, steering the ship towards the right. The back of the ship crashes into a mountain, sending the ship spinning. The ship hits two more mountains before Xephos can straighten it out.

Suddenly the mountain range is left behind them, leaving them to fly over flat lands and then open water.

They’re still descending.

Xephos looks down to the rippling blue, alive beneath them, and he thinks  _there’s my chance_.

\- X -

The fourth time he pilots something, he’s not trying to save anyone’s life. Thank Notch for that, because the plane is hard enough to pilot when he’s in there alone, wondering how the controls work.

Xephos hates these planes. The controls feel so familiar to him, yet whenever he reaches down without looking, there will be some other thing that he did not intend to grab in his hands. It messes with him terribly, making his head and heart ache when there are no bright colours conforming under his hand, intimately known except not.

It’s throwing him off.

Still, he gets used to the controls well enough, quicker than Honeydew does. It shouldn’t be a point of pride, but soaring up high above his friend and doing barrel rolls in the sky gives him a certain thrill that he finds hard to conventionally come by on the ground.

Xephos laughs, delighted, as Honeydew yells at him to _watch out for Notch’s sake!_

Lysander seems impressed, or at the very least, indulgent of Xephos’ fun.

When they get to Skyhold, Xephos is thrown off yet again. The colour of the monolith in the sky seems off, and for the life of him, Xephos can’t explain why. He’s confused again, circling it twice to look for something on the side, nearly hitting the carnival’s airships and a tree. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, to be honest.

He crashes a while later, fingers reaching for the wrong things all over again, and no time to pull up. When he closes his eye as the plane crashes on a spire, the image of rippling blue beneath him and metal flaming around him pops up, and is gone just as quick.

“You alright down there?” Honeydew asks from the landing strip.

Xephos is sitting on the edge of the spire, feet dangling down into nothing and sucking in cold air as he rubbed his face. “I- I’m fine,” he says, getting up with a shake of his head.

Lysander comes then, and Xephos leaves behind memories to go forward, cobblestone in his hands and a sword strapped to his back.

\- X -

The fifth time he pilots something, it’s not a complete disaster. He says that, but he still ends up free falling back down to the ground.

The hot air balloon is a lot different from what he’s used to, but then again, he isn’t really used to anything. Shouldn’t be, anyway, but the body remembers more than his mind can recall.

It’s easy enough to pilot, enough that it’s almost like a scenic trip down the Wall and to a spider-infested tree. It’s only scenic if he looks away from the dry, toxic desert and does not think of where they are going or what they are doing.

The air is nice up this high, cool on his skin. The sun is out, and being so close to the desert makes him feel parched and dusty. Xephos is glad when they move away to greener places, but not quite as happy when Peculier leads them straight to the tree full of spiders.

He can see the webs from miles away.

“This way, heroes!” Peculier says, forging straight towards it. Xephos and Honeydew both groan, but follow.

In the end, the only way to get down is to jump out of the bloody balloon. Free falling into a mass of webs and leaves is not his favourite thing to do.

But still. Not a complete disaster.

\- X -

The one time he pilots something without it crashing or some other disastrous thing is the time they go to Stoneholm.

He’s used to the plane now, and his fingers have stopped reaching for things that aren’t there.

When they land, he does the proper procedures and lands safely on the dirt. Nothing blows up, there are no fires, no free falls, no flying pieces of wood or metal. Just dirt piled up in front of his colourful plane, having collected there when he skidded on the ground after landing the slightest bit.

It’s almost anti-climatic, after all those crashes. He would think that he would feel prouder, feel his chest puff up in pride and a grin break his face.

 _Look, no scratches!_   he had thought he would yell.

He doesn’t though. Xephos just hops out of the plane, giving it a cursory glance before staring up at the dwarven city.

He’s not as proud as he had believed he would be. He just feels a calm acceptance, like this is the way the world is and should be. It’s strange, considering that this  _is_  an achievement.

He looks for where Honeydew landed without giving it much thought. 

Stoneholm stood proudly before them, and inside is a map fragment. He didn’t have the time for much else.


End file.
